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Hi Jon,

Yours is a good question. (Full question is at the end of the blog)

There are 3 reasons why I have gravitated to my set of six fly boxes as set out below:

My "trout" lake fly box
My bass EP & perch fly box - lake and river
My booby fly box
My dry fly box
My nymph fly box
My salt water fly box

Reason 1

Using this approach if I am walking the shore of an in-lake say Burrendong I would only carry two fly boxes

My bass EP & perch fly box - lake and river
My dry fly box

If I am walking the Mitta Mitta river I would carry two fly boxes

My dry fly box
My nymph fly box

I was fishing the Boyne Rives (which I did yesterday) and had not fished it before I would carry two fly boxes. As it turn out I fish it regularly so only needed the salt water box but had it been new water I would have felt confident that I had all the options covered.

My bass EP & perch fly box - lake and river
My salt water fly box

I believe that my 6 fly box approach will cover 95% most opportunities that I will ever come across are covered by my 'default' selections very well and if I come across something unusual in the remaining 5% I'll have something there which may not be perfect but that I will confidently give a go...

Sorting my flies by say 'orders' I expect I can see that I would have a lot more boxes to carry to get up to that 95% mark and on top of that I would also have fly boxes for non representational flies.

Apply this logic to a range of fisheries and I hope you will come to the same conclusion I did.

Please note however when I can I do research fisheries, that either I have not fished or have not fished at the same time of the year, very carefully before fishing them. Later this year I will be representing Australia at the Commonwealth Fly Fishing Championships in Canada ... looking forward to that. As well as taking my:

My "trout" lake fly box
My booby fly box
My dry fly box
My nymph fly box

I will also have a range of venue driven flies that I am putting together to reflect what my research indicates is appropriate for fisheries we will fish in Canada in fall (Autumn).

I am doing the same for a social trip to Christmas island which is just 3 weeks away. I reckon that I have flies in my My salt water fly box flies that will cover all but one of the 24 species I am hoping to catch and for that fish the bonefish I even have appropriate flies such as crazy charlie flies there. Having said that based on research I will also have a separate fly box of venue specific / species specific bone- fish flies. Photo of that box, still with a few gaps to fill in, follows.

Reason 2

I found that having flies of the same order mixed together did mean that I was opening my fly boxes more often and whilst that is OK robust flies like streamers and nymphs etc it is very hard on winged flies like mayflies and particularly spinners if they are in the same box. If you fish regularly on a range of waters you will find that something like 80% or your river action over time will be on nymphs (unless you only fish when hatches are on or terrestrials are on the wing) Just the process of working through a selection of flies in you fly box will put pressure on those fragile tails and wings and chances are they will not be as neat a year down the track if the fly box has been thumbed through many time to say access a nymph of the same order.

Reason 3

Flies catch more fly-fishers than fish.

If you have a box for each order ... where do you stop. So for dries a logical break of the dry fly orders may be for example you have a box for caenis mayfly, baetis mayfly and then caddis, hoppers, beetles and so on. Are you going to carry all those boxes when you next fish say the Eucumbene River and then find that over time your really only fish say 10 flies from all those boxes regularly. One of the problems with too many flies is that you have to know how each on should be fished in a range of fisheries. I am not smart enough to retain all that information an instead firmly believe that if you had 20 flies and fished them all well and importantly have confidence in you will be better off that trying to second guess nature to tie the perfect fly on even though you may not remembers how it is best presented and best fished. I am confident that my 50 or so trout flies that I include in my bread an butter selection above will cover say 95% of my fishing opportunities. If I added another 100 different flies that fly may increase a point or to but my concern (and I have seen it heaps of time) is that the bigger selection will lead to more fly changes and less time actually fishing.

Hope this helps.

Regards
Chatto.

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On 10 May 2016 at 10:25, Jon wrote:

Hi Stephen

My name is Jon.... I've been fly fishing for about 6 months, and love it. I recently signed up to your site as a member.... great site, great info.

A question for you... regarding organisation of fly boxes.... I'm sure you've been asked a million times.. sorry if this is 1 million and one...

I've currently got my fly boxes organised in terms of insect order.. for example, I have one whole box dedicated to mayflies with, nymph, emerger, adults, spinners all in the one box.

From what I've read so far you are an advocate of a much simply means of organising... with a box for dries, wets, nymphs.... and so on

Is there a reason you've done this ... does it even matter ?

Cheers Jon

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